AUTHENTICITY

The students of the MSS will be required to search for the connection between the stories they will choose to tell to their own personal life.
By asking the questions, why?
What does it mean to me?
We will aim to create a deeper emotional relationship with the stories.
By engaging in this process we hope that the individual personality of the performer will shine through the told story.
We will be looking of how “a story” can become “Your Story”.

RELEVANCE

We believe that the art of storytelling cannot be isolated from what is happening around us.
Like any other art form it needs to communicate with the outside world.
It needs to investigate and challenge situations in our reality.
At the MSS we will look for the connection between the storytelling works to relevant themes that exists in today’s current world affairs.
The Student will have to ask himself: What is happening in the world that I care about? What is truly meaningful for me? What do I find unbearable? What would I change?
Dealing with these questions will create the foundation and inspiration for an Individual storytelling piece that the student will create and perform at the end of the course.

PROFESSIONALITY

We at the MSS take the art of storytelling very seriously.We believe that like any other art form, to become a professional requires dedication, ambition and courage to face challenging processes within oneself.

The same thing applies for storytelling.

In the MSS the students will be constantly challenged in their artistic development.

IS THIS FOR ME?

WE ARE LOOKING FOR …

… artists who don’t just like stories, but have a burning desire to find and tell the ones that are relevant. Storytellers, who will dig into their lives to find meaningful material, look at the world with open eyes and see the stories out there and investigate how they can appeal to audiences.

WE BELIEVE …

… that every person is potentially a storyteller, but we also believe there’s a few special ones out there who will change the face of storytelling. Artists who don’t just want to dabble with a hobby, but want to create a professional way of life involving storytelling.

IF YOU’RE WILLING TO INVEST …

… the time and energy to become a daring storyteller, we are willing to guide you on this exciting path. We will work within a small group of maximum eight students to ensure every student receives the most possible benefit and individual attention.

OUR COURSES

INTRODUCTION WEEKEND – online course

UPDATE: Due to the Covid19 restrictions, we’re now offering this course as an online course!Since the pilot in the first weekend of April was a succes, we’re now offering a 2,5 day course, in which we’ll focus on how to create powerful personal stories, based on your memories. The couse will teach you some techniques which you can apply to create personal stories, for any purpose.

THE OFFLINE INTRODUCTION WEEKEND COURSE IN MEZRAB

The Mezrab Storytelling School offers a three days introduction course to cover the basics of storytelling. In these three days we will work with you on basic storytelling techniques and give you a taste of how to craft a short story and share it with the audience in an engaging way.

For those interested in the professional course or Next Step course, the 3 days might give you the opportunity to get an insight of the way we work in the school and to get to know our teachers and their approach.

New date for 2020:

June 26, 27, 28 Open for subscriptions!

Time: 12 noon until 5.30 PM on Friday, Saturday and Sunday

Location: Mezrab, Amsterdam

Price – € 250,-

Language: English. If you prefer, you can do the exercises and tell your story in Dutch.Teacher: Sahand Sahebdivani

Info & subscription: info@mezrabstorytellingschool.nl or fill in the contact form

THE NEXT STEP – ONLINE COURSE

So, you’ve done an intro course.

You’ve already started telling stories or are using the techniques we taught you in other fields. Maybe you haven’t been active since the course, but all the knowledge is still sloshing around in your subconscious and now you’re ready for another challenge.

Have a look at The Next Step weekend – online course.

During the weekend we will focus in a deeper way on these two main elements from the craft of storytelling:

– The form and structure of a Story.

– The authentic expression of the Teller.

Dates for the next step courses in 2020:

June 5, 6, 7

Time: 12:00 to 17:00 on Friday, Saturday and Sunday

This course will be online on Zoom.

Language: English

Price: € 195,-

This course is suitable to anyone that has completed the introduction weekend.

Info & subscription: info@mezrabstorytellingschool.nl or fill in the contact form

THE MEISNER TECHNIQUE

The aim of the Meisner Technique is to bring the actor back to his emotional impulses and to acting that is firmly rooted in the instinctive. It is based on the fact that all good acting comes from the heart, as it were, and that there’s no mentality to it.”

Learn to live in the moment as an actor, and let go of any idea of result. Learn what it means to really do and to respond truthfully to a given moment based on what you get from your partner. Through improvisation, emotional truth and personal response learn to resonate authenticity within a given circumstance. Only in this way will you begin to understand the definition of real acting, which is to live truthfully under the imaginary circumstances.

Basics

We will be working on basics of the Meisner Technique (Mainly what is known as the repetition exercise). Good for beginners as for people that have experience and wish to deepen their skills. The beginners course will be taught by: Raphael Rodan.

Next course:

18th,19th and 20th of September

Time: 12:00 – 17:30 on Friday, Saturday and Sunday

Location: Mezrab, Amsterdam

Price – € 275.

Advanced

We will be introducing the next step of the technique, what is know as the “Independent activities”, the improvisation work. Suitable for anyone that had worked followed the basic course or for people with previous experience with the Meisner Technique. The advanced course will be taught by Tom Radcliffe.

Tom Radcliffe is one of the best Meisner teachers in Europe today. He studied acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama from 1984 -87 and then worked as an actor in film, TV and theatre until 1997. He began to study with Sanford Meisner In Los Angeles in 1991 and studied with him for 5 years! He has been teaching the Meisner Technique now for 20 years.

new online masterclass

HOW TO CREATE PERSONAL STORIES

If you’re interested in learning how to tell powerful personal stories, crafted from out of your memory, but you want to do this in your own time, in your own pace, here’s the solution: the Mezrab Storytelling School now offers an online masterclass thought by Raphael Rodan. In 8 short video’s he will guide you through the steps to take a memory, and craft it into a powerful, engaging personal story.

You can do the exercises in your own pace, but if you do them all after each other, this course will take approximately 4 hours. You’ll end up having a short 5 minute story. When you have mastered this technique, you can make your stories as long as you like, with any topic you’d like to talk about.

THE PROFESSIONAL COURSE 2020-21

In this challenging course will work with you for 5 months on the foundations of storytelling as a performance art.

Dates: the 31st of August 2020 to 25th of January 2021 – 3 days a week (Mon, Tue, Wed, 10 AM- 3 PM)

We will work in two fundamental ways:

from the inside out, finding the personal relevance and the emotional connection between the teller and the stories being told, and from the outside in, using techniques such as structure of a story and the use of language. How do these two approaches complement each other? Imagine a river. It needs a shape to keep from water spreading and disappearing into the ground. That is the outside in. But it also needs the stream of the water otherwise the shape will remain dry. That is the inside out.

The same goes for storytelling; if both movements exists, the art becomes alive.

Here are some of the elements and methods we will cover during the course:

Outside in:– Story structure.– Building imagery.– Working with language.– Saying more with fewer words.– Working on body language and voice.

Inside out:

– Personalizing a story.– Emotional freedom.– Humanly understanding the core of the story.– Developing the flexibility to work in different stages and circumstances without losing the power and essence of the story.– Creating truthful contact with the audience.

At the course we will also dedicate some time to work with voice coach Yinske Silva and with theatre director Linda Bosch in order to investigate connections between the storytelling and the theatre world.

Another element of the course will be being your own producer. How do you find new audiences? What does it mean to do the PR for your own shows? How can you initiate new opportunities and create your own work?

You will create several presentations on different stages and a final presentation in the main hall of theatre Podium Mozaïek

Course info: 31st of August 2020 to 25th of January 2021. 3 days a week on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, from 10 AM to 3 PM + some extra hours for private coaching and on presentation days. Course location: Mezrab (Veemkade 576, Amsterdam). The school is closed for fall break (2 weeks) and Christmas holiday (2 weeks).

Please send an email to info@mezrabstorytellingschool.nl with answers to the following questions:

1 Tell us a bit about yourself (age, cultural and artistic background, etc)2 Tell us about your experience in the performing arts.3 Can you describe for us your latest project and your role in it?4 What brings you to do a professional course in storytelling?

Thank you! We will contact you within one week.

SAHANDSAHEBDIVANI

StorytellerSahand was born in Iran but fled at the age of three to the Netherlands with his parents. He was trained as a storyteller in the Dutch Royal Institute of the Tropics. In 2004 he opened the Mezrab Cultural Center, which has since grown to be one of the most important stages of storytelling in the world. In 2014 the Dutch storytelling community awarded him the title Storyteller of the Year. He currently tours Europe and outside with the hit storytelling show Kingdom of Fire and Clay (which he performs with Raphael) as well as his solo shows.

FARNOOSHFARNIA

Theatre & Performing Arts Farnoosh was born in Iran and fled to the Netherlands with her family at the age of five. She was trained as a storyteller for children and in telling stories in Dutch Sigh Language. Her passion is to tell multidisciplinary stories; storytelling mixed with theatre, dance, music and Sign Language. She’s one of the founders of the Amsterdam based youth theatre group DEGASTEN. Farnoosh currently works as a programmer for the location theatre festival Oerol and as theatre advisor for Fonds Podiumkunsten (Fund for the Performing Arts).

RAPHAELRODAN

StorytellerRaphael Rodan is an award winning theatre maker and Storyteller. He graduated in 2008 from the School of Speech and Drama in Harduf in his country of birth Israel. He continued his actor training at the Actors Temple in London. He worked in Israel as a theatre director for Arab and Jewish young actors, using theatre as a bridge for communication. Since his move to Europe he runs storytelling workshops and performs all over the continent. At 2018, Together with Sahand Sahebdivani, he became the Artistic Director of the Amsterdam Storytelling Festival.